On Wednesday (Sept. 24), the 1-ton Curiosity rover drilled 2.6 inches (6.7 centimeters) into an outcrop at the base of the towering Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky.

The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) should finish its 24-minute orbit-insertion burn at 10:11 p.m. EDT Tuesday. Confirmation of the success (or failure) of this crucial maneuver should come to ground control minutes later, mission officials have said.

The MAVEN spacecraft executed a picture-perfect orbital insertion burn late Sunday night (Sept. 21), slowing down enough to get captured by Mars' gravity in a Red Planet arrival that had mission team members cheering with excitement and relief.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) was inserted into Mars orbit on September 21st, 2014.
The minutes leading to engine cutoff are explained by the flight systems manager Tim Priser and mission control celebrates the announcement.

After a 10-month journey through deep space, NASA's MAVEN probe arrived in Mars orbit late Sunday, on a mission to help determine why the Red Planet changed from a warm and wet place in the ancient past to the cold, arid world it is today.

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, which will study the atmosphere of Mars like never before, arrives at the Red Planet tonight (Sept. 21) and you can watch it live online. Watch the live webcast beginning at 9:30 p.m. ET (0130 GMT).

After streaking through space at mind-numbing speeds for 10 months, NASA's MAVEN probe and India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft will have to slam on the brakes if they hope to be captured into orbit Sunday and Tuesday.

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission will take measurements with its Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) that have never been collected before. Dr. James Garvin speaks to Space.com's @TariqJMalik about the mission.

A concept mission that would fire scientific missiles at Mars to search for signs of subsurface life is making technical strides, team members say, but it still needs quite a bit of financial help to get off the ground.

The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity is heading to the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop (seen above the scale bar). The rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) imaged the 'Amargosa Valley' as it would appear to humans if placed on Earth.

Having traveled 25 miles since landing in 2004, the long-lived NASA rover snapped an image that included several hundred yards of its tracks as it rolled along the rim of Along the rim of Mars Endeavour Crater on Mars.

NASA is looking for a place to land its next Mars rover on the Martian surface. Expected to launch in 2020, the space agency asked scientists where they'd like to see the rover land on the Martian surface.

The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which aims to land four astronauts on the Red Planet in 2025, announced today (Sept. 4) that it's raffling off a round-trip suborbital flight aboard XCOR Aerospace's Lynx rocket plane.

In the evening, Mars and Saturn can be seen in the southwestern sky. Jupiter can be viewed in the eastern sky in the early morning hours. Also, the Moon adds additional light for farmers to harvest their crops.

Mission team members had been considering drilling a rock dubbed "Bonanza King" but scrapped the idea after pre-drilling activities suggested that the stone is not stable enough. Curiosity has instead resumed the long drive to the towering Mount Sharp.

A photo from NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars set the Internet abuzz this week with claims that the robot had found a "thigh bone" on the Red Planet. But not so fast. That so-called bone? Just a weathered Martian rock, NASA officials say.

The researchers discovered the microscopic oval object within the Nakhla Mars meteorite, which fell to Earth in Egypt in 1911. While the structure's appearance is intriguing, it most likely formed as a result of geological rather than biological processes

The discovery of a microbial ecosystem deep beneath the Antarctic ice doesn't necessarily mean that life teems on frigid worlds throughout the solar system, researchers caution: subglacial Lake Whillans is not a closed system like Jupiter's moon Europa.

Uwingu launched its "Beam Me to Mars" project today (Aug. 19), inviting people to contribute, for a fee, to a "digital shout-out" that will send messages from Earth to the Red Planet on Nov. 28 — the 50th anniversary of Mars exploration.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover had been heading for Mount Sharp via Hidden Valley, a sandy swale that's about the length of a football field. But Curiosity turned back shortly after entering the valley, finding the sand surprisingly slippery.